Struggling to Escape the Bronx’s Grasp

To say that Mikey (Alexander Emmet), the embattled protagonist of “Grand Slammed,” has hit a rough patch understates the matter gravely. An aspiring pitcher, he blows his chance in front of a talent scout, leaving blood spattered on home plate from a wild pitch. That evening, he serves as a getaway driver when his buddy Pete (Dimitri Meskouris) hops out of the car for an unexpected gangland shooting.

Howie (Ben Mac Brown), a lawyer friend who was also in the car, promises to fix Mikey’s legal situation, but his obvious designs on Mikey’s actress girlfriend, Mimi (Natasa Warasch, who helped write and produce), make him difficult to trust. And not even a boozy weekend — including a laced drink — in the Hamptons can faze Mikey before his coming Phillies tryout, an audition for which his construction worker father (Paul Calderon) has impossibly high hopes.

Throw in rape, erotic asphyxiation and a violent beating, and it’s clear the director John Nizzari’s Bronx tale has more than its share of macho posturing. Yet amid the overheated, sometimes amateurish histrionics — Mr. Nizzari shoots a lengthy father-son blowout in a single, theatrical take — “Grand Slammed” contains inklings of a serious point about immobility in America.

Howie, the only character who seems to have a shot at escaping the neighborhood, is also a pathological liar, sowing discord among the others and plying a friend (Walter Masterson) with drugs. The Shakespearean plot devices don’t mesh with the documentarylike, realistic portrait of the Bronx. But despite the movie’s considerable rough edges, there’s little that’s predictable about it — not least the unexpectedly delicate moment on which it closes out the game.